There was silence in the car for a long time. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. I knew the world was terrible, but it wasn’t terrible like this. And these people had landed on Earth expecting a better life and instead were met by angry protests and forced to live in tent cities. If there was anyone who deserved a good life, it was the Guides.
“Just one more question,” I said. “Why no shoes?”
Coya laughed, a wet, crying laugh. “That was just something Suski and I decided. Because we’d never walked in shoes before, and it looked hard.”
“It is hard,” Suski said.
I laughed, and then Brynne and Rachel laughed, and then Kurt did, and soon we were all laughing, and Suski was pulling his shoes off, exposing his bare feet.
FIFTEEN
It was twenty minutes before midnight when we rolled through Sioux Falls. A light rain was falling, just enough to keep the wipers on their lowest setting.
We pulled over to get gas, and Suski slumped low in his seat. The rest of us got out to stretch our legs. With her makeup on, Coya was indistinguishable from any other pale-faced girl.
Brynne was glued to her phone, finally in a place where we got good reception, and Rachel went into the store to stock up on snacks.
“Are you all right?” I asked Suski, when it was just him and me in the car.
He looked out the windows thoughtfully. “I worry about my people. We may be safe, but what about them?”
“They have the entire army guarding them,” I said. “I mean, are you okay? Your father just died.”
“I have to be strong,” he said. “For Coya. For all of us.”
“Hey, Suski,” I said. “We’re in this together. I don’t know if you noticed, but there are six of us on this road trip. Not just you and Coya. We’re all taking care of each other. I’m here to take care of you.”
“You are kind,” he said. “Humans are not always kind. And, in truth, you are not always kind.”
“Listen,” I said. “This isn’t a pity party. This is an adventure. We’re going on a road trip. You don’t know what a road trip is, but it means fun.”
“This is not supposed to be fun,” he said. “This is supposed to be an escape.”
“Did you know that sometimes humans use the word escape to mean fun? You probably don’t know the word vacation—of course you don’t—but this is what a vacation is. It’s a bunch of people getting together and going somewhere. You talk and you eat and you listen to the radio too loud and you have fun. Yes, we’re being hunted by horrible parasitic spiky monsters, but no vacation is perfect. It’s better than being stuck in the middle seat on an airplane.”
“I don’t understand.”
“It was a joke.”
“You joke a lot.”
“You don’t joke enough,” I said.
Kurt opened the door and got in. “Good news. I got everyone a Sioux Falls ‘The Heart of America’ shot glass. I would have gotten the fridge magnets, but then one of us would put our magnet on the car and Alice would freak out.”
“Damn straight,” I said.
I saw that Kurt was also holding a Lincoln High School Patriots sweatshirt and a Patriots stocking cap, and he handed both of them to Suski, who changed out of his blazer. I put the blazer in the trunk.
Brynne climbed in and then Rachel. Coya got assigned to sitting on Kurt’s lap, and I gave him the look of death just before she sat down. He gave me a very innocent Hot alien girls sit on my lap all the time look.
“Okay,” Brynne said. “I’ve been texting with Emily Fenton, and she says people died. She doesn’t know who, but she saw bodies on the floor as she was running to evacuate. The aliens—the Masters—killed all the FBI, and she said she only saw one National Guardsman who was helping students evacuate. There was a fire in the building, but she doesn’t know how bad.”
“What?” Kurt asked. “How many students? Who?”
“She has to be exaggerating,” Rachel said. “That can’t be right.” Then, with a softer voice, she spoke to Brynne. “Did she give any names?”
“Only a few.” Brynne paused. “Benjamin Widmer. Sara Glassman. Chani Armitage. Emily Renault. She says there were more. And Hannah’s car got hit as she was trying to drive away, but she got out and ran. She’s okay.”
We all let that sink in. Was it my fault? Was it because I’d rescued Suski and Coya? Did the Masters kill those others just because they were in the way? Collateral damage? Or were they killing people to get information out of them—to find out where Suski and Coya went? To find out where I had taken them? This was my fault.
Rachel looked up, her voice shaky. “I’ve been trolling the news online. The crash site got strafed several times, but they have no idea yet about casualties. Witnesses are saying anywhere from three to five small ships attacked, and they’re estimating each ship has four to six Masters on it.”
“What about the president?” Kurt asked.
“He’s in the hospital,” Brynne said. “They’re not saying how bad he is. The vice president is in charge. At least fourteen Secret Service agents are dead. There’s video of the aliens leaving in their ship from the Governor’s Residence—someone fired a rocket launcher or something at it. Maybe a rocket-propelled grenade. It didn’t seem to make a dent in the ship. But the missiles at Minnetonka took down two ships.”
“Awesome,” Kurt said, with a kind of dejected happiness.
“So the Masters are out there somewhere, either looking for us or planning to attack the tent city?” I said.
“Yeah,” Brynne said. “But even if they found our room at school, they wouldn’t have any way of finding your grandma, right?”
“Right,” I said. “I haven’t even been there in three years. We send letters once in a while, but none since I’ve been in Minnesota. Plus, it’s a PO box, so they couldn’t find her house from it.”
“My update,” Rachel said, “is that I have a shopping bag full of pop and Oreos.”
“Oh no,” I said. “We do not eat inside Bluebell.”
“Dude,” Rachel said. “Oreos.”
“Dude,” I said. “Hand-sewn leather.”
“I promise to eat very carefully.”
“Ugh,” I said. “I trust you, but it’s Suski here I don’t trust. He can’t eat an Oreo cleanly to save his life.”
He looked confused.
“Let me teach you,” I said. “Rachel?”
I heard the bag tear, and I turned back to grab one.
“You put the whole thing in your mouth,” I said, very seriously. “No half-bites. No unscrewing the cap and licking out the filling. No opening your mouth if the bite is too big. You keep your mouth closed and chew.”
“I don’t even want one,” he said.
“That is blasphemy, and I won’t have that in my car. We are on a road trip, and you will eat an Oreo. Rachel?”
She handed me another, and I put it in Suski’s hand.
“Now,” I said, “do you want to be cool or not?”
He looked uncertain.
Brynne piped up. “You want to be cool.”
“I want to be cool.”
“I want to be cool, too,” Coya said.
“Rachel,” I said. Another cookie was distributed.
“On the count of three, we all cleanly eat our Oreo. Cleanly. One, two, three.”
I shoved the whole Oreo in my mouth and waited until my lips were sealed around it before biting down. Suski let a few crumbs leak out from his lips, and he chewed awkwardly, then swallowed and opened his mouth to show me.
“Not necessary,” I said. “Rachel, I trust you have Mountain Dew to wash down these Oreos?”
“I do indeed.”
“Please distribute to my alien friends. And honestly, people, the Masters will be the least of your problems if you spill in Bluebell.”
I put the car in gear and pulled out of the gas station.
“Does someone have something good to listen to on their phone?” I asked.
Everyone read through their top playlists. Rachel’s was entirely too much classical music—she really loved the cello—and Brynne was a Top 40 girl. Kurt’s was an adequate mix of popular stuff and indie rock, so he won. I plugged it into Bluebell, and we headed west into South Dakota.
South Dakota was flat and straight, and my GPS told me the road went for 130 miles through farmland without turning. With all the confidence of German engineering and an FBI agent’s ID badge, I laid the pedal down and flew. We made thirty miles in just over twenty minutes.
“Crap,” Rachel said. “Crap crap crap.”
“What?” I asked, looking at her in the rearview mirror.
“Masters just hit that gas station in Sioux Falls,” she said, the glow of her phone lighting up her face. “They just destroyed it. Massive explosion. Two ships.”
“They tracked us there?” Kurt said. “Using our cell phone signals?”
“They must have,” Rachel said, plainly starting to panic. “But why did they hit that and not out here?”
“My phone isn’t getting any bars,” Brynne said.
Kurt shook his head. “Neither’s mine.”
“Mine still has a few bars, but my GPS isn’t working very well out here,” I said. “It keeps blinking out.”
I turned down the music and called my dad.
He answered on the first ring.
“You shouldn’t call me,” he said urgently. “Was that you in Sioux Falls? The security camera footage is already on the news. You have Suski and Coya with you, and the Masters are after you.”
“Yeah, they’re following us.”
“Two ships. Turn off your cell phones. Bluebell’s got GPS, doesn’t it? See if you can find the fuse that disables it.”
“Okay,” I said, suddenly panicked. They couldn’t be following us. That was the whole point of escape. I pulled over onto the shoulder and turned around to my friends.
“Guys, turn off your phones. Now.”
“Aly,” Dad said, using his I’m trying hard to be a good dad voice. “Why did you take them with you? I told you to get out.”
“You told me I could take my friends with me.”
“I thought you meant Brynne and Rachel.”
“I know you did,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
I climbed out of the car and knelt down on the pavement, looking under the steering column for the fuse box.
“You need to hang up now,” he said. “But, Aly, I love you. Be safe.”
“I will. How will I call you?”
“Don’t call me,” he said. “Stay with Grandma Tanner until I come to get you.”
“Okay,” I said, pulling out the little fuse tweezers and searching for the right one. “Love you, Dad.”
“Love you.”
He hung up, and I suddenly felt very alone.
“Brynne,” I said. “You’ve got an iPad. Is there any way to disable that? Airplane mode or something? Or, I don’t know, just turn it off. Everyone else, turn off your phones and leave them off. Take out the batteries if you can.”
“What happened?” Suski asked. We’d probably been talking too much, back and forth and over each other, for his translator to keep up.
“A witness saw two of the ships heading west out of Sioux Falls,” I said.
“Is there a place we can hide?” Suski asked.
“I don’t know. And I don’t know how long ago it was. Long enough that it’s already in the news.”
I found the fuse for the dashboard display and hoped it also controlled the GPS system. At the very least it would control the GPS interface.
“What if they looked at the video cameras from the gas station?” Brynne asked. “Is this because I was texting with Emily?”
“I don’t know how it happened,” I said, trying to stay calm.
“So what do we do now?” Kurt asked.
“I don’t know,” I said, suddenly angry. Why was everyone looking to me? Just because I had the car didn’t make me in charge. And the fact that my dad worked for NASA didn’t mean anything anymore—I didn’t have my dad now. I’ve always had my dad.
Rachel opened her door and stepped out in the cool night air. She stretched and then reached down to help me up. “Let me take over for you,” she said.
I nodded tiredly and hugged her. She was surprised, but hugged me back. I didn’t let go, and soon I was fighting back tears. Everyone got out of the car then and stood around us. None of us knew what we should be doing, and I think we all felt stung. I regretted ever leaving Minnesota. We should have just gone to the crash site. I’d expected the Masters’ spaceship to attack the tent city—which they did. That made sense. But why were they chasing us?
I turned to Suski and Coya.
“When you guys started at the school, we were told to treat you like royalty. That’s why they’re following us, right?”
“But we told you,” Coya said. “It doesn’t matter now. Not on the ship.”
I sniffled and wiped my eyes again. “The Masters didn’t get the memo.”
SIXTEEN
The lack of motion woke me up. Rachel had pulled over on the side of the road—an interstate—and the sun was high in the sky.
I looked around and saw a motorcycle cop behind us with his lights flashing.
“Where are we?” I asked, face-to-face with Kurt, whose lap I was sitting on.
“Just outside of Colorado Springs,” Rachel said. “Sorry.”
“No worries. We have a Get Out of Jail Free card.”
The cop came up to the window and looked inside. If he was startled by Suski’s stark white skin, he didn’t say anything.
“Do you know how fast you were going?”
“Around a hundred?” Rachel said. “But let me explain.”
“Hang on,” he said, and peered in the back windows. “You’ve got too many people in the car, too. Can I see your license and registration?”
“My license is in the trunk,” she said, and handed him the FBI badge. “But I’m supposed to show you this and have you call this number.”
The cop looked at the badge, then back at Rachel. “Is this one of your friends? They answer the phone and pretend to be the FBI?”
“No,” Rachel said.
I wished I was sitting in the driver’s seat. I wanted to get out of the car, but I knew that always freaked out cops.
“Sir,” Rachel said. “Can I get my license from the trunk?”
“I suppose you’d better,” he said, and backed away from the car.
I couldn’t hear them as they talked, and once she opened the trunk of the car, I couldn’t even see them. The minutes seemed to drag on endlessly.
“How are you doing?” I asked Kurt.
“I remember that I used to have feet,” he said. “But it’s been a while since I’ve felt them.”
I pretended to punch him in the stomach.
“Did I drool on you this time?”
“Not that I noticed.”
The cop came back to the open driver’s window and peered inside the car. “How are y’all doing?”
“It’s my car, officer,” I said. “If you want to talk to me.”
“I want to talk to this young man,” he said, pointing at Suski. “What’s your name, son?”
Suski glanced back at me, and I nodded to him. “Ho’ Suski leshhina,” he said, and then the translator said, “I am Suski.”
“Well, I’ll be,” the cop said, and lifted his head out of the window. He stood there for a minute and then walked back to Rachel.
“Is this bad?” Suski asked.
“No,” I said. “I think the cop will call that number.”
“What is a cop?”
“Someone who keeps the peace,” I said. “Like a guard. Someone who makes sure people follow the rules. Rachel broke a rule by driving too fast.”
“She was driving very fast.”
We waited for what seemed like a very long time.
“Have you slept, Suski?�
��
“I have not,” he said. “I am enjoying the ride. I did not imagine a world could be so big—that you could go so far in one direction.”
“You ain’t seen nuthin’ yet,” Brynne said with a smile. “The world is a lot bigger than this.”
“How about you, Coya?” I asked. “Have you slept?”
“Yes,” she said. “Not well, though.”
Rachel closed the trunk and came back into the driver’s seat. “I think everything’s going to be okay.”
I could see the cop clearly, as he stood beside his motorcycle, the FBI badge and Rachel’s license in his hand as he spoke into his radio. He was talking a lot, but it was probably a big deal that he’d seen an alien all the way out here.
Finally, the cop walked back and handed the badge and license to Rachel. “Good news,” he said. “Your story checks out. Better news, I’m going to give you a police escort to the state line, and we’ve alerted all the cops along the way to clear the path.”
“You did what?” I asked. “We’re trying to stay incognito!”
“We just want to keep you safe, ma’am,” he said.
“They traced us to Sioux Falls. Now they’ll know the road we’re on and the direction we’re going.”
“I’m going to be going along with you,” he said. “You’re going to be safe.”
I couldn’t believe it. We thought that we’d thrown them off our trail—thought that we’d disappeared, and now everyone with a police scanner knew where we were.
I opened the door. “Rachel, I’m driving.”
“Please,” she said, getting out of the car.
“I’m sorry if this isn’t what you wanted,” the cop said. “We’re only trying to help.”
“It’s too late,” I said, walking around to the driver’s side of the car. “What’s done is done. This had just better not make the news.”
“I’ll follow right behind,” he said, obviously sorry, but I was too upset to be nice. “Drive as fast as you safely can. I’ll keep up.”
“How far is it to the border?” I asked. The faster I could make it, the sooner we’d be off the radar again. Assuming the news didn’t travel to New Mexico.
“About a hundred miles. I think we’re at mile marker one-oh-five.”
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